Salsa dancers 1

I have taking some Salsa dancing lessons off and on and admire those couples that turn, spin, and step with such rhythmic beauty.  Here is a sketch were I first did a gesture drawing and then refined it with some line and form.

Antenna

It's been about a year since I did my last plein air painting.  I met up with the Burlingame Plein Air Painters Meetup group at Princeton Harbor in Half Moon Bay to exercise my artistic abilities and get some fresh air.  Here is the result of a few hours dabbling with my oil paints.  A few people walking by complimented me on the painting and as I was packing up my supplies one couple offered to buy my painting.  Maybe I'm not so bad after all.  Anyway, I do it more for fun than anything else.  If I had more time I would have worked out the values and forms a bit more.

More figures

It's been awhile since I did some figure drawing so I was feeling a bit rusty.  My daughter Marcie was in town who is an excellent artist so I invited her to join me.  Here are a few of the 20 minute poses I sketched.  Hope to do many more in 2016.

Friends

Can a still life represent friendship?  That was one of the questions I sought when composing this painting of a pear and garlic.  At a distance and in the shadows the pear and the garlic appear just as acquaintances having a conversation.  But as we look at their true nature we see they are literally very close to one another and that there is a clear affection as the pear leans into the garlic.  They come from very different backgrounds as the garlic grows up in the ground and the pear matures in the canopy of a tree and yet they find themselves together here - possibly in someone's kitchen.  Allegorically speaking the two represent people from different cultures finding each other in unlikely places and bringing beauty to the world as represented by the harmonious triangle of the composition.

Life Drawing

I discovered a fantastic group of artists in San Francisco that hosts a weekly figure drawing workshop  every Saturday morning.  The models are very professional and provide some very beautiful (and challenging) short poses.   It starts with 2 minute poses and ends with 20 minute poses for about 3 hours.  Instead of a workshop it should be called a workout because it takes a lot of concentration to sincerely capture the beauty and humanity of these models.  Here are a few drawings from September.

After Taddeo Zuccaro

I was at the Cantor Arts Center today to see the collection of  Italian master drawings on loan from Princeton.  I greatly admired their knowledge and rendering of human anatomy through their masterful use of line.  Here is a figure drawing sketch after Taddeo Zuccaro, a 16th century painter from the High Renaissance.

Jazz saxophonist

Here is a quick charcoal sketch of a friend of my daughters playing the jazz saxophone.  They play in a jazz band together which is awesome!